Northern California man kills sons, then himself

February 3, 2013, 4:45PM

02/03/2013

MURPHYS — Authorities say a man in the tiny Sierra Nevada community of Murphys has shot and killed his two teenage sons, then killed himself.

A spokesman for the Calaveras County Sheriff's Department says when friends of the two teens went to the family home Saturday and looked through the windows, they could see 54-year-old Phillip Marshall lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Sheriff's Sgt. Chris Hewitt says when deputies arrived around 3 p.m. Saturday they went inside the home and found Marshall's sons — 17-year-old Alex and 14-year-old Macaila — dead of apparent gunshot wounds.

A preliminary examination showed that all three were shot once in the head with a handgun. Hewitt says the mother of the teens and estranged wife of Phillip Marshall, was out of the country at the time.

Murphys is about 80 miles southeast of Sacramento, just outside the Stanislaus National Forest.